Training Point: How to 'Read' Scripture

All Scripture was written to be read aloud. How do we know this? Because when scripture was written, 90% of people were illiterate – this figure was a little lower at 80% in the cities. The only way that 9 out of 10 people could ever encounter God’s word was when someone read it aloud to them! All scripture was crafted, composed and written with the express intention of being read aloud.

Luke tells us how Jesus began his ministry at Nazareth: He ‘Stood up to read’ those staggering words from the beginning of Isaiah 61; ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor … and then he sat down and everyone was looking at him.

Paul wrote to the new believers at Thessalonica: ‘I charge you before the Lord to have this letter read to all the brothers and sisters’

And when explaining to Timothy how to deal with false teachers and false teaching at Ephesus, Paul instructs him to ‘devote yourself to the public reading of scripture’

Now, there’s nothing wrong with reading scripture quietly and privately to yourself, so long as there’s a time and place when the Bible is read aloud to the believers.

Something happens when the word of God is read aloud. A power dynamic takes place. The power of the Spirit that inspired the words of scripture applies the spoken words of scripture to the minds, hearts and lives of those who listen to it.

Just as our Father spoke out words that created life at the very beginning, so the very words of God create life in those who hear the words of God.

Paul states this truth: ‘Faith comes through hearing, and hearing through the word of God’.

I once heard a preacher start his sermon by stating that since the person who had just read the reading had done it so extremely well, there was no need for him to preach the sermon! The Reader had rehearsed the passage so carefully and thoroughly, and read it with such intonation and skill and conviction that the very reading of scripture had itself been an exposition of the text.

There is a story about a Bishop asking an actor why the churches were empty and the theatres were full. The Actor replied; You speak the words of God as if they were the words of men. We speak the words of men as the words of God.

Try this today. Stand up straight. Fill your lungs with air, and read the words of God aloud, dramatically and with meaning, so that everyone can hear, and watch what happens to you and to those who hear!